Experts who exhumed the body of Salvador Dalí to collect samples for use in a paternity claim have revealed that the enigmatic artist’s trademark moustache still graces his face almost three decades after he died.

Narcís Bardalet, the embalmer who tended Dalí’s body after his death in 1989 and helped with the exhumation on Thursday night, said he had been delighted to see the surrealist’s best-known feature once again.

“His moustache is still intact, [like clock hands at] 10 past 10, just as he liked it. It’s a miracle,” he told the Catalan radio station RAC1.

Workers carry a coffin to be used during the exhumation of Dalí. Photograph: Albert Gea/Reuters

The DNA recovered from the remains will be compared with samples from Maria Pilar Abel, who claims to be the result of a liaison her mother had with Dalí in 1955.

Abel has been seeking to prove her parentage for the past 10 years and says the physical resemblance to the surrealist painter is so strong, “the only thing I’m missing is a moustache”.

She says it was an open secret in her family that the artist was her biological father.

She told the Spanish newspaper El País that she first learned of her true paternity from the woman she said she had thought was her paternal grandmother.

Abel claims she told her: “I know you aren’t my son’s daughter and that you are the daughter of a great painter, but I love you all the same.” She also noted that her granddaughter was “odd, just like your father”.

Under Spanish law, Abel would be heir to a quarter of Dalí’s fortune if the DNA supports her contention.

As Dalí bequeathed his properties and fortune to the foundation and the Spanish state, Abel has brought her claims against both.

In 2007, she was granted permission to try to extract DNA from skin, hair and hair traces found clinging to Dalí’s death mask. However, the results proved inconclusive.

Another attempt to find DNA was made later the same year, using material supplied by the artist’s friend and biographer Robert Descharnes.

Although Abel has claimed she never received the results of the second test, Descharnes’ son Nicholas told the Spanish news agency Efe in 2008 that he had learned from the doctor who conducted the tests that they were negative.

Abel told the Spanish news agency Europa Press that she was looking forward “to the truth being known once and for all”, adding: “I’m not nervous but happy and positive.”

The results of the latest DNA test are expected in a month or two. Once the samples have been tested, they will be returned to Dalí’s grave.